Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy Review: Fascinating Space Madness

From the moment the Guardians of the Galaxy are introduced as a space team that will do anything for a quick buck, it becomes very clear how dysfunctional they are. Gamora and Rocket are at each other’s throats. Drax and Star-Lord disagree. And nobody pays attention to Groot. For the next 15+ hours of play, I listened to these misfits argue, insult and chat nonstop, much to my enjoyment.

When I say “non-stop”, I mean they never stop talking. Rarely does a second go by without the Guardians sharing their thoughts. I am not exaggerating this frequency. Any moment of silence made me wonder if the game wasn’t working properly. The amount of dialogue that Eidos-Montreal produced is off the charts, and most of it is extremely well written, offering the witty humor, heartfelt intimacy, and utter chaos you’d expect from the Guardians.

Drax’s inability to understand colloquialisms and common phrases elicits great laughs and is as good as James Gunn’s portrayal of the character in the film. Guardians‘ films. I’ve never said this in a review before, but the dialogue is the best part of the game. Eidos-Montreal took him out of the park. The rest of the game offers a lot of fun, but with different levels of quality and polish; the latter subtly damages critical areas of experience.

It took me a few hours to warm up with both Star-Lord and the combat system. Peter Quill is a bit irritating from the start, but he shows up as the team dynamics start to gel, and the story softens from its overall bombastic tone to allow him to show his emotional side. I ended up loving him over time, especially when he talks to himself.

His story is well written and Eidos-Montreal did an excellent job injecting his leadership qualities into action and decision making. Players are in full control of Star-Lord and will determine the path their team will take. These options are not on the same seismic scale as a Mass Effect game and don’t change the story much, but they do offer fun alternate sequences and even more dialogue.

I can’t talk about all the results that come from these choices, but the dozen more I experienced in a second game were just as good and flowed as naturally as my first walkthrough of the game. While it was a lot of fun taking in the different humor or unique gameplay sequences that I missed earlier, they weren’t enough to make me want to go on and see how the second ride would be different. Again, things are not changing much.

This is a game where the narrative is as time consuming as the game. Given how enjoyable the story is, I had no trouble sitting back and watching a large chunk of my time, especially when I had control over the most important decisions. The allure of discovery anchors the story and touches each Guardian in a way that develops them thoroughly. I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, but the Guardians are chasing something evil that they unleash. That hook stays strong for most of the experience, moving at a pleasant pace and striking a delicate balance between the serious and the utterly absurd.

Eidos-Montreal fully embraces “science fiction” themes in worlds, characters, and that evil entity of the note. The worlds steal attention with their views of wild colors and strange designs. The characters are just as strange (sometimes for the sake of comedy), and that evil beast moves in the most peculiar and amazing ways.

Each world pushes the Guardians to lean on their unique abilities to navigate treacherous terrain. The paths to follow are always linear and filled with platforming sequences and combat arenas, just like Uncharted games. While the player only controls Star-Lord, a decision that works well for all aspects of the game, each Guardian can be summoned by pressing a button to perform a specific task. These short innings work well, and Eidos-Montreal even warps the character to the desired location to make sure they progress at a solid pace. You can summon Drax to knock down a pillar or Gamora to jump off a wall and propel you up onto a platform. All of the Guardians’ moves are used for environmental puzzle solving, which starts to get fun but loses its shine through repeated solutions.

Guardians also play a huge role in combat and are as powerful as you would expect. Groot can take down enemies with a swarm of roots, Rocket destroys enemies with a dumb amount of weapons, and Drax and Gamora use blades to slice and dice. For Star-Lord, however, this is not a game that she would consider a power fantasy. His blasters are weak and he must work hard to take down even the humblest of enemies. All Guardians must be used strategically to achieve success. Star-Lord can run fast and dial in the enemy’s health, but his most significant contribution is as a playmaker. When he wants to call a guardian, time slows down and he can tell him to perform a desired ability. It is not a fantasy of power, but a fantasy of teamwork that ends up being immensely satisfying when everything works as it should.

At its peak, combat is admirably handled via the controls, allowing the player to traverse the arena, quickly highlight objectives, and tell each Guardian what to do just as quickly. Given the number of characters on screen at any given moment, the fray seems chaotic, but it has a violent beauty, and you oversee everything, shouting orders for death to rain in various ways. Guardians can also chain most moves together to really show off the team’s power. At the end of the game, the battles are tremendously entertaining and offer a good challenge. Interestingly, the most powerful ability in the game is a pep talk from Star-Lord, which always carries a bit of humor, but stops combat for too long and ends up being quite annoying.

Now for the bad news: the opening hours of the match is a rough and uneventful ride. Before legitimate threats emerge, Guardians face gelatinous cubes and spheres, conflicts that are as boring as they sound. With a good majority of abilities locked away for more than half the game, the true potential of the Guardians is held in check for far too long and the experience suffers. This game is at its best when it’s over the top, and it does get there eventually, but not fast enough. The training wheels are on during the middle of the game. The lack of polish in the whole experience hurts too. Some animations are a bit edgy, specific gameplay mechanics like sliding don’t offer much precision, and the frame rate of combat can be difficult at times.

Another misfire is controlling the Milan in space combat sequences. It’s great in concept, but the awkward controls and lack of threat make these moments little more than a visual showcase. The other distractions in the game do much better. Tracking down different outfits for each Guardian is a nice reward, and some collectibles that appear in the Milan open up new conversations and backstories.

As a fan of the Guardians comics and movies, I really enjoyed the unique Eidos-Montreal version of this supergroup. Non-stop character banter and well-crafted choices make this a journey worth taking, even if the game takes too long to highlight the team’s true potential.